Angry Birds Site Toppled After Surveillance Report

Syrian Electronic Army ally allegedly defaces Rovio's Angry Birds website over reports that company shared user data with US and UK surveillance agencies.

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An attacker hacked "The Official Home of Angry Birds" website Tuesday. Gone was the official Angry Birds graphic, replaced with a "Spying Birds" logo. Above it, one of Finnish gamemaker Rovio's trademark red birds sported a National Security Agency (NSA) crest, while a "bad piggy" rolled away.

But Rovio's angrybirds.com website apparently remained hacked -- or at least defaced -- only for a few minutes before the company took the website offline. About 90 minutes later, reported Finnish news outlet Helsingin Sanomat, the game developer had the site restored, with the rogue artwork expunged.

Who hacked Angry Birds? According to the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), the site was hacked by a "friend" of the group. "The attack was by 'Anti-NSA' Hacker, He sent an email to our official email with the link of the hacked website," read a tweet from an official SEA account.

But was Rovio's website hacked -- for example to redirect site visitors to drive-by-attack websites -- or simply defaced? A Rovio spokesman didn't immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on that question. "At this stage it's not clear if Rovio's web servers were compromised or if the hacker managed to hijack the firm's DNS records and send visiting computers to a third-party site carrying the image instead," said security researcher Graham Cluley in a blog post.

Regardless, the attack appears to have been inspired by a report published this week -- based on information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden -- which suggests that since 2007, US and British spy agencies have been regularly intercepting mobile app data.

Intercepted information includes Google Maps data, IM buddy lists, phone logs, and geographic data embedded in social media updates, according to the report, which was jointly published Monday by The Guardian, The New York Times, and ProPublica. The report also described how, since 2012, British intelligence analysts have been able to intercept Angry Birds players' profiles, as well as advertising data, which might include information about everything from their location and marital status to political affiliations and income.

In the wake of that report, Rovio has strongly denied facilitating surveillance of its customers in any way. "Our fans' trust is the most important thing for us and we take privacy extremely seriously. We do not collaborate, collude, or share data with spy agencies anywhere in the world," said Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Entertainment, in a statement released Wednesday.

Rather, he pointed to advertising networks as the most likely culprit behind intelligence agencies grabbing mobile users' personal details. "As the alleged surveillance might be happening through third-party advertising networks, the most important conversation to be had is how to ensure user privacy is protected while preventing the negative impact on the whole advertising industry and the countless mobile apps that rely on ad networks," Hed said. "To protect our end users, we will -- like all other companies using third-party advertising networks -- have to reevaluate working with these networks, if they are being used for spying purposes."

From a big-picture standpoint, however, might many mobile app developers also be culpable because they handle or transmit data in insecure -- and thus easily interceptible -- ways? "There certainly is a problem with some smartphone apps transferring sensitive information -- such as GPS location, address books, and phone numbers -- in an insecure way," said Cluley. "Clearly more app developers need to work harder to ensure that any information which ekes out of their apps is properly encrypted and sent over a secure SSL connection."

One 2012 study, for example, found that nearly half of all mobile apps collect more data than they require, while one-third ask for many more permissions than they require. In many cases, this data grab has to do with feeding mobile advertising networks, while the excess permissions trace to lazy developers not taking the time to give their app only the permissions it requires.

Last year, of course, Snowden's leaks began highlighting the NSA's massive digital dragnet, which appears to be driven by a "capture first, worry about whether or not it's relevant later" ethos. Based on what's now known about how the NSA's surveillance programs operate, it's likely already capturing and storing massive amounts of personal information that gets transmitted insecurely by mobile apps.

So while smartphones bring convenience, thanks to insecure apps, they're also bleeding personal information and feeding a massive surveillance infrastructure. "A poorly configured smartphone may be the best espionage tool ever created," Edward Parsons, a cybersecurity senior manager at KPMG, said via email.

Mathew Schwartz is a freelance writer, editor, and photographer, as well the InformationWeek information security reporter.

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There is basic principle that everybody seems to be forgetting. If you don't want something to be known you keep it secret. You don't go giving the information you consider too private to every single application you download.

When you don't want people to know something you don't talk about it publicly, i.e. the Internet.

So why people complain when their marrital status and location, for instance, are revealed when it was them the ones who posted the information on the Internet?

The fact that Facebook, or an app asks for certain information doesn't mean you have to give it away, does it?

I like your second point as well. Many users freely give information with reading the small print. Everything is instant for us today and we do not want to take the time to even read the agreement portion of the apps. Information will continue to be stolen from users as long as they refuse to take the time and read the small print.

Nice points! The sad part comes in two forms for me. The first form is that users don't realize this prior to entering their personal info into various apps. The second part is that companies actually take your personal information and communicate it to third party sites. We must be open minded and realize that Hackers are all around us at all times.

It's amazing to me that you can even play a simple game anymore. I know plenty of individuals (Mostly women) who go crazy over the Angry Birds game. Hackers have found a way to steal personal info from simple games now. However, hackers also know who and what to target. This isn't out of the norm; they just caught many individuals with their pants down with this hacking scheme. The home page was total re-arranged by the hackers leaving many wondering if the site will ever be safe again. A nice site to visit is Fox News.com website Source: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/29/angry-birds-site-hacked-after-surveillance-claims/

Most mobile apps provide great content and usability and we consume them like hungry wolves without thinking about our data being collected and spread to ad networks, or worse, being intercepted by spy agencies. This isn't fun anymore.

I find it amusing/sad at the same time to note that a game was responsible for drawing the ire of privacy advocates. The fact is, any mobile app will collect user info and transmit it back to the mother ship without user knowledge. (Apple gives users the ability to determine what phones home while Android just nuked the feature on its latest platform version.) Of course, the app maker will point out that in order to install the app in the first place, the user first had to agree to give it carte blanche access, and, since most don't bother to read exactly what they are agreeing to, we have wholesale spying going on directly under the noses of the mobile device using public.

Published: 2015-03-03Off-by-one error in the ecryptfs_decode_from_filename function in fs/ecryptfs/crypto.c in the eCryptfs subsystem in the Linux kernel before 3.18.2 allows local users to cause a denial of service (buffer overflow and system crash) or possibly gain privileges via a crafted filename.

Published: 2015-03-03** REJECT ** DO NOT USE THIS CANDIDATE NUMBER. ConsultIDs: none. Reason: This candidate was withdrawn by its CNA. Further investigation showed that it was not a security issue in customer-controlled software. Notes: none.

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